manifest in his bearing. Those tried by fire are sure of themselves, and
it shows in their eyes. Besides, Jack MacRae was twenty-four,
clear-skinned, vigorous, straight as a young fir tree, a handsome boy in
uniform. But he was not quick to apprehend that these things stirred a
girl's fancy, nor did he know that the gloomy something which clouded
his eyes made Betty Gower want to comfort him.

"I think I understand," she said evenly,--when in truth she did not
understand at all. "But after a while you'll be glad. I know I should be
if I were in the army, although of course no matter how horrible it all
was it had to be done. For a long time I wanted to go to France myself,
to do _something_. I was simply wild to go. But they wouldn't let me."

"And I," MacRae said slowly, "didn't want to go at all--and I had to
go."

"Oh," she remarked with a peculiar interrogative inflection. Her
eyebrows lifted. "Why did you have to? You went over long before the
draft was thought of."

"Because I'd been taught that my flag and country really meant
something," he said. "That was all; and it was quite enough in the way
of compulsion for a good many like myself who didn't hanker to stick
bayonets through men we'd never seen, nor shoot them, nor blow them up
with hand grenades, nor kill them ten thousand feet in the air and watch
them fall, turning over and over like a winged duck. But these things
seemed necessary. They said a country worth living in was worth fighting
for."

"And isn't it?" Betty Gower challenged promptly.